Alex Shepard

I have been designing games since I was a little boy, planning out level layouts and character designs on paper before I even knew how to make games. As a high-school student I took every programming class available and have taught myself C++ afterwords. Since I graduated high school I have worked 6 seasons with iD Tech in order to teach campers more on how to fulfill their own dreams. Now I have moved on to making data move fast with VelociData.

Lead Instructor,
iD Tech Camps

As a lead instructor my main duty was to lead a team of instructors in teaching a group of students programming, game design, computer art, robotics and other skills as well as being an instructor myself. Our goals were to have students learn more about both game design and life skills. My other responsibilities included administering medications and first aid to the students, maintaining a backup system for the instructors to use with student projects, maintaining the technical capabilities of the camp, and generally assisting the camp director in managing the camp.

Instructor,
iD Tech Camps

As an instructor I was tasked with teaching groups of 3-8 students the fundamentals of programming in C++ or Java, RPG game design using Neverwinter Nights, RTS Game design using both Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 world editors, and FPS game design using the UDK, Hammer Editor (Source Engine), and FPS Creator.

I was also partly in charge of running non-computer related activities (card games, outdoor games, etc.) and supervising the well being of the students with other camp instructors.

Technical Support Manager,
VelociData

Ausbildung

Activities:
* Developer of part of the Megaminer AI Tournament System (Visualization Component).
* Active Tutor.
* Dungeon Master for 8 person party that lasted 3+ years.

Major Projects:
* Lead developer for a socialization and article rating plugin for the TWiki system that allowed users to up-vote and down-vote articles much like stackexchange
* Evolutionary Algorithm to solve the iterated prisoner's dilemma
* AI competitor for chess matches
* Interpreter for a Lisp Dialect
* Designer and Developer for the Megaminer AI Visualizer

Konten

This is one of the repositories used for Global Game Jam 2012 St. Louis. Our team worked to make a game that starts out just like snake: you move around as a snake and attempt to not run into things while collecting as much food as you can and when you eat something you grow. This all changes when you bite yourself or another snake bites you: that piece of snake that is not attached to you grows a new head and is now an antagonist as well.

The original project was written in javascript for unity. I was one of the two programmers tasked with writing this system. Later, after the game jam was over I switched to writing the system in the object oriented C# for greater flexibility.

My personal contributions in this project were movement of the snake, linking pieces together, growing the snake when food is eaten, separating the snake when a piece is hit and all C# code

Anytown, USA: a wretched den of nefarious ne’erdowells and horrific hoodlums the like of which have never before been seen. Only ONE man can stand up to this force of ever increasing evildoers. But unfortunately, he’s currently away for mandatory training. JOIN MISTER MEANER as he train’s at the S.L.A.P facility to better be able to hand out a firm helping of justice and even more relevant one-liners!
You are Mister Meaner, an overzealous super hero tasked with cleaning up the more minor crimes in the S.L.A.P. with his over-sized right hand of justice. You must sprint from malcontent to minor offender and slap them all before time runs
out.

I wrote the navigation systems for both the AI and the player and the sound programming for the project.

At first it seems familiar: You are a snake. You can move in four directions. eating things makes you longer. Here's the thing: you don't want to be longer. You have been there-- your coils have spanned the world, held the sun and moon in their twisting tethers. But now you long to return to normalcy, to balance. Your goal is to be the shortest snake possible. Do the unthinkable: bite your own tail, split yourself in two, and shrink down to a more manageable size. But beware! Bite off too big a chunk, and, like a hydra, it may grow a new head, come to life, and wreak havoc on your peaceful world!

My personal contributions in this project were movement of the snake, linking pieces together, growing the snake and separating the snake when a piece is hit.

This book is both an awesome learning tool and reference for anyone interested in working with OpenGl. It has all of the functionality of OpenGL explained in very readily understandable terms. Using this book I was able to go from my basic knowledge of 3D rendering to full understanding of all aspects of graphics including shader languages.

This book is the only of the game programming gems series that I actually own. There are a number of articles in this book that caught my eye, specifically the ones about particle swarm optimization and code coverage for QA. This book has a good number of notable "Gems" within in though and I would love to have the time to implement/use most if not all of them.

This book is exactly what it says it is, and introduction to directx 9. Some of the code in it is a touch dated, as are the patterns used, but it works very well as a basic platform for starting directx programming and understanding the workflow of the API.

There is an article in this book written by the architect for the original Dungeon Siege that gives an insight into both how the game was put together and the future of game engine architecture. This article was my first experience with the component-based architecture that I have been working with and seeing ever since. Notable examples of this architecture would be the Unity3D engine and the UDK.